Page 24 of Twisting Beauty

I leaned in, close enough that I could see the flecks of gray, almost silver, in his irises. “Maybe Magdalene changed me. Maybe I walked in one girl and walked out another.”

The words came out confident. But under the table, every muscle in my body had gone tight.

“And you”—I gave him my most dismissive look—“are just raging because the new me is no longer obsessed with you.”

For the first time that morning, something shifted in his face. It wasn’t much. Just the faintest press of his mouth. Then it was gone, smoothed back under that cold, maddening stillness. Something hardened in his eyes, a flare of challenge.

My stomach dropped. I thought my pushing would make him back off. I feared it had only made him more intent on breaking me open.

A throat cleared softly, and the sound cracked through the tension. Lorcan leaned back by a fraction. I jerked upright in my chair, heat rushing into my face.

Mervyn stood in the doorway, straight-backed in his dark coattails, his expression as blank and polished as the silver laid out across the table.

“The town car is ready,” he announced.

He dipped his head once and withdrew, leaving the door open behind him like an offered escape.

Relief rushed through me too quickly, thin and stupid and dangerous. I went to stand.

Lorcan tipped my chair sideways toward him with smooth control.

My balance shifted and I was forced back into the seat, my hands shooting out and landing against his firm chest. My face ended up inches from his, his warm breath brushing my lips.

A sharp, unwanted heat rippled under my skin, and my breath caught hard. My fingers pressed deeper into his chest as if that might steady me, but the traitorous pull low in my belly only tightened, and shame climbed hot up my throat right behind it.

His gaze dropped to my throat.

To the thin cut barely hidden beneath the high lace collar.

The cut he had put there.

He brought his mouth close enough to turn the air between us into something intimate and threatening all at once.

“You look so pretty when you lie.”

8

LIATH

Isat crushed up by the window in the back of the town car.

Lorcan sat beside me, stretching his legs out and draping one arm along the back of the seat, taking up most of the space. His smell of smoke, wood and violins filled the cabin, pressing in around me.

His stare burned into my profile and heat gathered low in my belly, slow and bewildering, until I had to lock my knees together and force my spine straight against the leather seat.

This reaction was wrong. It had to stop. But my body didn’t listen.

I fixed on the passing view, looking anywhere but at him.

Trees lined the road out of Lasair Manor, thick and dark, then the car rolled across the limestone bridge over Blackwood Lake where the water flashed cold and silver beneath the gray morning light. Beyond it, the town opened into a curved cobblestone plaza with a copper-capped clock at its center, quaint enough to pass for harmless if I did not already know what kind of monsters called this town home.

Grand Victorian homes with sandstone walls and casement windows slipped past, all historic charm and old money, before the trees thickened again and swallowed the road.

The familiar gates of Ravenwood appeared ahead, black and severe against the green. The car turned into the long drive and pulled up in front of the main building.

I lunged for the door handle. I needed distance. Clean air.

The door held fast.